FRANKFURT— Demands grew Thursday for the resignation of a second leader from Germany's Christian Democrats as a battle for succession broke into the open following the departure of Wolfgang Schaeuble, the party chairman.

Confronting an unexpected leadership vacuum, the national board of the party called an emergency meeting in Berlin late Thursday to review its options.

The affair, linked to secret campaign donations collected under former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, prompted Parliament this week to levy a record 41.3 million Deutsche mark (dollars 20.7 million) fine on the party, which in turn provoked the resignation of Mr. Schaeuble as chairman of the party and head of its parliamentary group.

Commentators said the center-right party that led Germany through most of its postwar history is embarking on a long and difficult period of transition as it begins to shake out generations of old Kohl-Schaeuble loyalists. Mr. Schaeuble's resignation thrust the party into "a time of confusion," the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote on its front page.

In Hesse, home to the financial metropolis of Frankfurt, Mr. Koch's local state branch of the Christian Democrats has admitted it kept 18 million DM in secret Swiss accounts. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats are unrelenting in their calls for Mr. Koch to step down and open the way for new elections in the state.

Polls predict Mr. Koch's party would lose a new election and their loss would bolster the chancellor's party in the state-run upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat.

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Mr. Koch again refused to quit Thursday. He spoke from the floor of the statehouse during an angry bipartisan debate over the scandal as the opposition pressed for a state parliamentary committee to investigate him.

"The yardstick applied to Wolfgang Schaeuble must also be applied to Roland Koch," said Rita Suessmuth, who acted as Bundestag president while Mr. Kohl was chancellor.

Pressure on Mr. Koch swelled after Mr. Schaeuble justified his retreat by calling for "a visible new start with new people." Mr. Schaeuble said the Christian Democrats were "in the worst crisis" of their 50-year history.

"People alone are not a new beginning," Ms. Suessmuth said in a television interview. "It is still a long way before we are finished with this crisis."

Mr. Kohl has maintained an "iron silence" throughout the affair, party officials complain, virtually blocking the party's efforts to untangle the elaborate system of secret bank accounts. Mr. Kohl has ignored pleas to divulge the names of the political donors and the extent of the funding.

The former chancellor has kept his seat in the Bundestag but resigned under pressure from his role as honorary party chairman. He is under investigation by both a special parliamentary committee, federal prosecutors in Bonn and by his own party.